Dozens of jobless Romanians, who were rounded up and sent home as part of a
government crackdown on immigrants "taking the mickey", have vowed to return
to London just eight days after their eviction.

For the past month, Viorica Sandhu and her daughter, Sonia, have lived in Park Lane in London’s Mayfair.

It is one of the world’s most expensive streets, and its residents typically live in multi-million-pound town houses, enjoy supper at the Dorchester hotel and shop for £250,000 supercars in the local showrooms.

Not the Sandhus. They and about 60 fellow Romanians, most of them women, lived in a squalid encampment on a patch of grass in the shadow of Marble Arch on Park Lane’s central reservation.

Eight days ago, the police moved in, and the Sandhus were moved out.

The Home Office bought them tickets, at taxpayers’ expense, for coaches and planes home.

Viorica, Sonia and 22 fellow Romanians, who had made a living begging in the street, took up the offer and promptly left Britain.

Their removal last Sunday evening was heralded as a great success. The Park Lane Roma had been blamed for a surge in petty crime and begging in London’s West End and “creating havoc”.

The clampdown by the authorities demonstrated that they would no longer tolerate immigrants “taking the Mickey”. The reality, The Telegraph can disclose, is somewhat different.

Last week, we tracked down almost half of the 24 Roma who had been removed from Park Lane at home, and we found that they plan to return to London as soon as possible because begging here is lucrative compared with what they can earn in Romania.

In effect, the Home Office has paid for them to go home for a brief holiday. What is more, the Government, hostage to the European Union’s laws on freedom of movement, is powerless to stop them coming back.

“I will definitely go back, no doubt about it. From there I can send money back to my children and we can actually make a living. Here we have no job, no car, no nothing,” explained Sonia Sandhu, 36, a mother of eight.

The next time, she is threatening to return with her children. The family live in near-abject poverty in Lisa, a village 90 miles from Bucharest.

Fifteen people live in their two-storey house. Children and dogs play in the street, and horses pulling carts trundle up and down.

The Sandhus arrived home on Tuesday after a three-day coach trip from London, having been given food and blankets for the journey.

Only a few days earlier, Viorica Sandhu, 70, had been photographed in Park Lane, dressed in a purple coat and looking miserable during the police raid.

She may have appeared unhappy but London, she explained, was “very nice”, adding: “We stayed at Marble Arch. We got food and shelter and bathroom. There is no living here in Romania.”

Rumours abound of Romanian beggars earning £100 a day in London.

Viorica and Sonia said they each could earn about £40 a day, targeting wealthy Arabs and other Muslims who shop in the area and for whom giving to beggars is a central religious tenet.

Viorica and Sonia at home. (DAVID ROSE FOR THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

By contrast, Viorica says, state handouts in Romania are worth no more than £20 a month.

The women are saving for the bus fare back to Britain.

Sonia said: “Give me the shabbiest house there, that would be fine. Then I can go and work and send money back for my children. I could take care of the elderly, cook, clean, take care of the kids. Maybe work in the garbage department?”

In one of Romania’s farthest flung corners, at the very edge of the European Union, The Sunday Telegraph tracked down others who had been in London and put on the same coach back at taxpayers’ expense.

Danusica Lascarache, 51, is now back home in Iasi, a city in the north of Romania, near the border with Moldova.

Danusica Lascarache. (DAVID ROSE FOR THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

Eight members of her family live in a two-room house, including her husband, their three children and three grandchildren. The house has windows but no glass.

She went to London alone to send back money for her family after Romanian authorities caught her selling scrap metal and stopped her welfare benefits.

“I will go back to London in September,” explained Mrs Lascarache. “Life there is very good. I can find a lot of good food in the garbage.”

Border officials will be unable to stop her. Romanians can stay legally in Britain for 90 days.

“Every day I thank God we have what we have to put on the table for the children. They eat first, then we have what is left over but there are a lot of us in the house,” said Ana Maria.

Her three-year-old son, Artur Marian, is underweight and his leg in a cast after he fell and broke it.

“I would be so glad if we did not need to go to another country to beg,” said Ana Maria. “This is the worst thing in our life. We have to beg to live — we are like dogs.

“The British Government has a right to send them home because there are too many people, making shame with the garbage.

"My mother stays there in the park [Hyde Park] with the people because she is afraid to be on her own.

"She tried to clean up and shouted at the people making a mess but I understand the British people who say we are an ugly nation because we are doing this to a national park.”

Across the city, Gabi Lacusta, 35, her sister, Salia, 38, and their mother Angela, 60, are settling back into life in Romania after the three-day coach trip back.

Salia Lacusta with her children. (DAVID ROSE FOR THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

Between them, the sisters have 12 young children but plan to return. They will steer clear of sleeping in Park Lane and Hyde Park because of the notoriety the camp has earned.

“The police chased us and we would get our blankets and move to another place,” recalled Gabi. “Then the police told us to leave because of the rubbish and dirt: that is why the police chased us away. Next time we will go to another park.”

Gabi used to send about £70 a week back home for her children; Salia did the same. They had chosen London because they believed “people in Britain were more charitable than in other countries in Europe”.

In Saveni, also near the Moldovan border, Ciprian Ferariu, 33, is planning his return to London in three weeks’ time. He, his mother, Maria, 52, and her nephew, Bostan Vasile, 35, also came home — courtesy of the UK taxpayer — by plane and coach. While his mother begged, the men collected scrap metal, earning them £50 a week, they said.

Maria Ferariu (52) and her son, Ciprian. (DAVID ROSE FOR THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

“People were very kind, they brought us food, they went to McDonald’s — this was not just white English people but also Arabs, Muslims, Moroccan people, even French and the tourists,” said Mr Ferariu, who has two children.

His neighbour, Dana Covacia, 28, left her three children in the care of her uncle when she came over in February. She spent two months begging and was arrested three times before being ordered to leave.

“I would not go back if I had the means here to sustain my children,” she said, “Whoever likes begging for food for a living?”

The problem of how to tackle the growing number of rough sleepers is a vexing one. The Home Office insists that paying for flights and coaches is a cheap way of ridding London’s streets of Romanian beggars.

The alternative is an expensive legal battle that can begin only once the beggars have strayed over the 90-day limit.

“Where foreign nationals with no permission to be in the UK refuse to return home voluntarily we will take action to remove them,” said Paul Wylie, head of Home Office immigration enforcement in London.

“This includes those from within the European Economic Area who have been in the country for longer than three months and are not working, studying or self-sufficient, as required by EU law.

“We will not have people taking the Mickey. Our message is that people should take the free flights if they are not entitled to be here. If they do not leave, they will be arrested.”

Restrictions that prevent Romanian citizens from settling in Britain without a job to come to will end in January, but that will make little practical difference to the beggars who are using the 90-day rule and have no intention of working.

It may, however, allow Roma men to come to seek labouring work, and in turn to eventually be able to claim benefits and access to social housing.

The police work with Thames Reach, a homeless charity, which in a little over three years has helped more than 2,000 central and eastern Europeans to leave London — or in its jargon become “reconnected” — by buying them tickets home.

“It’s a scheme saving lives,” said a charity spokesman last week. “In answer to those that wish to stress the costs, they also need to look at the savings too, both in human terms and also in terms of savings to the public purse.

“Thanks to the London Reconnection Project, there are fewer hospital admissions, less crime and fewer police and ambulance call-outs.”

However, Westminster City Council, the local authority in charge of the area, is in despair. It has spent £500,000 on tackling the problem since the Roma began arriving in large numbers before the London 2012 Olympics.

The council has spent about £10,000 alone on coach tickets home but has now given up on that policy as a “bottomless pit”.

Nickie Aiken, the council’s cabinet member for community protection, said: “The fact that people who left the country after the Marble Arch camp was broken up regard London as so pleasant that they are already planning a return trip illustrates the farcical nature of this situation.

“Until people suspected of entering the country to beg are stopped at the border, the council will forever be playing this hide-and-seek game around central London, and using taxpayers’ money to clean up the mess.

“We can offer free return flights as a carrot, but to be honest Britain offers too much carrot and not enough stick. This is not about the free movement of EU nationals around Europe. This is about those who misuse the freedom of travel to move around Europe creating havoc.

“As a local authority, we do what we can to disrupt rough sleeping camps and to make life difficult for those who beg and commit low-level crime, but businesses and residents are utterly fed up with it.”

Despite last Sunday’s removals, there were still about 15 Roma sleeping rough in Park Lane last week. With the early morning rain lashing down, they sought shelter on Thursday beneath the portico of a car showroom.

The night before, many had been served with police notices excluding them from 20 London parks and open spaces including Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square.

In the morning they queued at a newsagent’s for coffee and cigarettes and to put money on London travel cards. One owner no longer allows them in because he claims they steal sweets.

“They go begging and they go pickpocketing,” said Imad Habib, the shopkeeper. “In the evening I see them on Oxford Street and they go very close to Arab ladies. I always warn the women to be careful with their purses.”

The Romanians deny any wrongdoing and insist they are victims of persecution.

Maria Stoica, 59, a great grandmother, showed The Telegraph her exclusion notice. It warned her she would be exposed in newspapers if she was caught breaking the law.

Mrs Stoica, from Botosani, said: “I miss my family and now I want to go home. I am waiting for immigration to send me home. I won’t come back if they do.”

She had flown to London with a £120 ticket from Bucharest, looking for free NHS treatment for an undiagnosed stomach illness. “Somebody back home told me if I come to the UK, then I can get free treatment but that isn’t the case any more,” she said.

Mrs Stoica said she wanted to return home only if the Government paid for a flight. A three-day coach journey did not appeal.

“I was caught three years ago stealing chewing gum in Germany and I’m afraid the Germans will arrest me,” she explained.